‘Doctors for export’: medical migration from Ireland c.1860 to 1960. By Greta Jones. Pp 248. Schöningh: Brill. 2021. €119.

Abstract

Greta Jones’s ‘Doctors for export’ provides the first comprehensive study of Irish medical migration across the hundred-year period from 1860 to 1960. The study is based on an impressive sample of 4,254 migrant doctors, with information gathered from six of the seven Irish medical schools’ lists of graduates for every five years across the period. Migration as a phenomenon has occurred throughout history but has only been a topic for in-depth study in more recent times. Additionally, historians of medicine are now recognising the importance of studying different types of migration as well as the migration of healthcare workers. Of course, Ireland was not the only country participating in medical emigration, but as Jones argues persuasively the use of Ireland as a case study can ‘contribute to understanding the nature of the phenomenon as a whole’. Through this book Jones seeks to uncover the costs and benefits of migration for both the doctors themselves and Ireland in terms of the impact on class, culture, and education. Her study builds on previous works, such as that of Marguerite Dupree and Anne Crowther, who investigated the experiences of undergraduate medical students in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Jones admits that she drew inspiration from Dupree and Crowther’s book, Medical lives in the age of surgical revolution, for some of the methods and sources used in her book, but ‘Doctors for export’ offers a much larger scale study and over a longer time period. This book, based on an impressive sample of doctors, follows the flow of emigration, mostly to Britain and its empire, but also further afield. The book maps key themes of Irish medical migration through these hundred years, looking at the options and opportunities available to doctors who remained in Ireland and leading on to the factors that might have pushed medical graduates to seek work elsewhere. Jones investigates the role of medical education in the establishment and continuation of the Irish middle class. Considering the importance for families to send their sons (or later daughters) to medical school and the impact of this on the family’s fortunes and social standing, this book offers a new angle on the study of class in Ireland. Additionally, Jones includes an interesting exploration of the impact of partition on medicine, both north and south of the border, comparing experiences and considering the impact of politics on medical education. Finally, there is an examination of the immigration of doctors into Ireland, considering a different but equally interesting angle to medical migration. Jones reflects on how, while still being a significant exporter of doctors, Ireland did not have enough doctors to meet the needs of its own population. She looks at why this was the case and what attempts were made to mitigate the effects of the departure of medical professionals. Overall, Jones concludes that around 40 per cent of Irish medical graduates emigrated to work outside Ireland and that the majority went to Britain. She speculates around the motivations for these graduates, outside of the obvious need to earn money, and concludes that there were a variety of motives at play. These included that reality that the Irish Medical Schools encouraged over-production, unwilling to reduce their numbers, and in consequence encouraged Irish medical migration. In addition, Jones discusses how over the period the destinations of medical migrants took on a more global nature, including America. Jones’s book provides a well-written and exceedingly thorough history of medical migration in Ireland. Her study makes a significant contribution to the history of medicine in Ireland and, more generally, to the study of culture and class in Ireland. Given the significance attached to Irish migration and the importance of the Irish diaspora internationally, the Irish case study has much to add to the developing field of the history of migration globally. In this regard ‘Doctors for export’ makes a useful contribution.